


It Must Be Believed To Be Seen

by blueticked



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Magic, Vex Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:48:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26673190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueticked/pseuds/blueticked
Summary: Scar is an archaeologist. He likes digging up old things and discovering stories of the past. Except, this 1000-year-old pyramid isn't covered in dust and looks very much alive.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 58





	It Must Be Believed To Be Seen

**Author's Note:**

> I'm stressed out over an essay due wednesday but instead of writing my essay I wrote this instead.
> 
> My apologies that this is just a scene and not an actual story. I, understandably, don't have the time to flesh this out :( I just needed a break from schoolwork. Sorry for the mess.
> 
> 100% not historically accurate.
> 
> Many thanks to 00FFFF for the inspiring idea!

The pyramid was just one among hundreds scattered around the area.

Just another relic of the past, another tomb of a past pharaoh.

Scar and his team had excavated many pyramids just like this. There might be brittle papyrus scrolls inside, written in ancient hieroglyphics, detailing the life of the pharaoh lying within. There might be rusted ornaments of gold surrounding the tomb, either for protection or for sending the dead on their way to the afterlife. There might still be a body inside the tomb - they had come across pyramids with an empty tomb.

Scar was the dreamy archaeologist, the one that got into the team by a miracle just here for stories of the past. He wasn’t particularly skilled in excavating, no, he was here to read about their lives, to step into a snapshot of time. He was fascinated by ancient offerings, long-forgotten gods and their supposed gifts of power - abilities to shake the earth with earthquakes, abilities to drain entire rivers, abilities to cast drought on enemies. And his lack of skills sometimes irritated his team, but the stories he gathered from these places, the tales he weaved together, were so beautiful that no one had actually complained about him.

Of course, these phenomena had scientific explanations behind them nowadays, but _gosh_ did Scar continue to wish that these events were still explained by _magic_. Or… something unexplainable. He had a feeling that ancient magic still existed; it needed to be discovered. He had been drawn here by a force he didn’t understand; he was looking for something he wouldn’t know until he saw it.

It was no surprise then, when Scar and his team came across the pyramid that looked alive, _felt_ alive, that Scar was the first to volunteer as their guinea pig.

It was dumb, but he was holding onto his hopes that something from the past, something as distant as magic, was keeping this pyramid frozen in time, fresh and young.

"It's a trap. The whole thing is going to collapse. You'll never make it out alive."

"It's a curse. Don't go in, we'll all be cursed. They know that we're together."

"A recent shower of rain probably just washed the dust off," Scar pointed out in response, keeping his voice controlled despite the excited pounding of his heart hidden within his chest.

"It hasn't rained here in years." Someone pointed out. "And why is it only this pyramid that was affected?"

"I'm going in," Scar pretended he hadn't heard the question and turned away from his team, towards the dark abyss of the pyramid entrance. All he had on him was a torchlight gripped in his right hand. "Come in if you don't hear from me in 30 minutes."

The inside of the pyramid was strangely cool despite the desert heat. Scar could almost hear the low hum of an air condition following him, but it must have just been the contradictory heat waves rising from beneath his feet. The cold air and the heat waves rolling about and clashing in the pyramid made the air thick and suffocating - or maybe there was something else cluttering the air and making it hard to breathe. Scar raised an arm and coughed into his sleeve.

Once he had walked down the initial hallway and stepped into a room, he no longer needed his torchlight. The room was lit by a light source he could not see, almost mimicking the brightness of fluorescent lights. He could see everything: every masterful carve in the copper blue ornaments littered around the room, every clean stroke of blue ink on the unrolled scrolls lying on the table.

On the opposite end of the room sat a tomb: free of dust, invitingly open and radiating with some sort of ancient power source - perhaps the very source of energy keeping the pyramid alive.

The room had been prepared for a visitor.

Was he the visitor they had been waiting for? Or was he an intruder into a perfectly preserved room used for some sort of ritualistic event?

Regardless, Scar took a further step into the room, and another step. He was curious enough to want to read the scrolls on the table. The energy in the air was pulling him in like a puppet on strings. There was a fluttering feeling of anticipation in his stomach, the phantom touch of wings fluttering against his skin, a small flying force he couldn't see- couldn't tell if it was real- against his back pushing him, urging him in.

The blue ornaments were placed on the floor in a pattern that reminded Scar of a line that was broken, interrupted, as though the ornaments couldn't stay in their spots and moved just slightly out of place.

The ornaments had intricate faces carved into them, faces of grins, of smiles and laughter; exactly the same, and yet somehow it gave him the feeling that each one was different. Scar swore that their eyes were watching him, following him, unnerving him.

Were they depictions of happiness, or… or something more sinister he couldn't really identify?

That didn't stop him from leaning over the table and brushing his fingers gently against the blue inked hieroglyphics. He was like a cat, entering a room he should not be entering, touching something he shouldn't be touching.

He could feel every imprint beneath his fingers, preserved so perfectly that the strokes seemed to have just dried moments before he entered. He was no linguist but his research had taught him to read a few simple hieroglyphics, such as _pharaoh_ , _power_ and _vex_.

Scar frowned to himself. He was sure he had not come across the term "vex" in his precious excavations. But there was a voice at the back of his mind reading the scroll for him, interpreting the glyphs he did not recognize, telling him the story he could not read.

The voice shifted from the back of his mind to the front. Scar startled himself when he realised that the voice he was hearing was none other than his own. He was reading the scrolls he could not read, words fluently dripping off his tongue, ancient words guttural and rough against his throat.

Scar couldn't tear himself away from the table, his fingers and voice flowing from line to line, working his way down the long scroll of glyphs. The glyphs trembled beneath his fingers, alive and anticipating - or maybe it was just his fingers that were trembling. He couldn't understand what he was saying but he could see each individual glyph begin to glow with a strange blue light as he rattled them off, adding to the vibrations of power in the air.

Was he choosing to stay here or was some otherworldly force keeping him here?

Maybe it was a little bit of both.

Scar was done. He had read through the entire scroll and the force holding him in place released him, causing him to stumble against the table, held up only by quick hands gripping the edge of the table and pulling himself upright.

Something shifted behind him, something hard scraping against stone, and Scar whirled around quickly.

The pharaoh sat up in his tomb, a friendly and pleased smile directed at Scar as his stark blue eyes rested on him. The pharaoh wasn't young, but he wasn't particularly old either. He had a grey beard that seemed well maintained. He wore robes that were white and clean, complete with polished golden circlets around his wrist and a shining blue gem the same colour as his eyes hanging around his chest.

"You woke me up," the pharaoh spoke in perfect English. "I've been waiting thousands of years to pass the power of the vexes onto someone."

"What in the world?" was Scar's whispered exclamation, though it was more to himself than a response to the pharaoh.

"It's normal to be overwhelmed," the pharaoh continued, rising from the tomb. Scar pressed himself up against the table as the pharaoh vaulted over and out of the tomb with an agility that didn't seem possible for someone who had just woken up from thousands of years of an induced magical sleep. "I was too, when I was chosen to carry this gift."

"Chosen?" Scar echoed.

"Of course," the pharaoh walked up to Scar. He took Scar's hand in his - his touch soft, his skin soft and young - and placed Scar's hand on the blue gem over his chest.

The blue gem was cold to the touch, but hummed with a radiating energy that warmed him. It glowed just a little brighter at Scar's touch-

-Scar inhaled sharply as some sort of _energy_ transferred from the gem into his hand, a pulse of warmth that travelled down his fingers, down his arms and dispersed into the rest of his body, leaving behind only a longing tingle in his veins.

The pharaoh pulled Scar's hand away and Scar released a trembling breath he hadn't realised he had been holding.

He missed the warmth and cold of the gem immediately. He curled his fingers into a tight fist, holding himself back from reaching out for the gem again. It was difficult to- there was something pulling him to it- the gem was _calling_ him- he belonged to it- he was _theirs_ \- _**you are ours**_ -

"Calm down, young wizard," the pharaoh chuckled, drawing Scar's attention back to him.

"Wizard?" Scar breathed.

"You didn't think the vexes would just give their powers to a random someone, did you?" The pharaoh said, raising his hand to stroke the gem.

"Powers?"

The pharaoh flashed him a smile, then carefully removed the blue gem from his golden neckpiece. He took Scar's hand once again and pressed the gem into his palm.

Scar wrapped his fingers around it eagerly, wanting the energy to become _his_ again.

The freezing cold gem burned his palm. Foreign energy he couldn't control, power he couldn't understand seeping through his skin and invading his veins. It travelled quickly, resting in his toes, tingling his fingers, worming its way up into his head-

The chitter-chatter of voices filled his mind, almost overwhelming, but excited enough to not give him a headache. The blue ornaments - the _vexes_ , he knew that now - were _alive_ , moving, dancing as they surrounded him. Their wings brushed against his skin, paper-thin and hummingbird fast, fluttering in the air around him. Scar turned around, spun around to look at them, laughing with them, a sense of pure _delight_ and _completion_ filling him.

This was what he had spent years of his life looking for.

"Treat them well, Wizard Scar,” the pharaoh spoke again, a smile in his voice. Scar turned around to face him again.

"Wait, how do you- what do you-" Scar began, but where the pharaoh had been standing was no one.

Where the vexes were fluttering were no vexes, blue ornaments broken and scattered across the ground in ruins.

The blue ink of the spell scrolls laid out on the table faded in brightness, the papyrus scrolls crumbling with age.

A layer of dust settled atop everything as the magic disappeared.

“Scar!”

Scar turned around, the rest of his team storming in.

“Why did you run off to the next pyramid?” The group leader demanded to know.

Scar frowned at them, gesturing at the room. “I volunteered to come in first-”

“-volunteered? Who gave you the right to just run in willy nilly? There are _procedures_ , Scar! There are rules to follow! Guidelines to abide by! We’re dealing with ancient artifacts, you can’t just storm into a pyramid and do whatever you please with it! I know you like stories but… we have rules, Scar!”

“But,” Scar blubbered, “it was _alive_ , you all saw it-”

“I didn’t see you running in here, or I would have stopped you! I-” They threw their hands in the air and left the room, gesturing at another team member to talk some sense into Scar instead.

“You all saw it,” Scar waved his hands around the room. “This pyramid was _alive_. What’s going on? Is this a prank?”

“Scar,” she spoke slowly, patiently, as though speaking to a child. “Pyramids aren’t alive. There’s nothing in here that’s alive. Come on, lets go back outside.”

Scar walked over to the pharaoh’s tomb, hoping to see him lying there- 

\- nothing. The tomb was empty, an even layer of undisturbed dust taking residence in it.

“I’ve never noticed how blue your eyes are, Scar,” the team member commented, standing by the doorway, waiting for him.

Scar’s head snapped towards her, a hand rising to his eyes.

“My eyes are green,” he said.

“It matches your blue necklace,” she continued, as though he hadn’t said anything.

Scar looked down at the studded diamond necklace around his neck, the blue gem having shrunk itself to fit as a centrepiece.

He brushed his finger against the gem and shivered when it responded with a distinct pulse of energy.

Of power it held, of power he wielded.

Of the same magic that now coursed through his veins.

Scar smiled at the necklace, then beamed at his friend as he exited the room.

He might have to go on his own exploring adventure sometime.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought?


End file.
